Jasc Software (recently acquired by Corel Corp.) made its name known with Paint Shop Pro, which is a very powerful yet affordable image editor. Market research, however, has shown that many users would like a simpler version of Paint Shop Pro, so in response, the company has introduced Paint Shop Pro Studio.

PSP Studio includes the standard edition of Paint Shop Photo Album 5 (PSP Album). Like Adobe Photoshop Elements 3, PSP Studio provides a complete solution for editing and organizing digital images. But when compared with Adobe's generosity when selecting features to put in Photoshop Elements 3which includes many of the powerful tools found in Photoshop, including the Healing Brushit's surprising how stingy Jasc was when creating PSP Studio.

PSP Studio has no adjustment layers and no History palette, and offers less than half of Paint Shop Pro 9's effects filters. Even more crippling are the sparse tools for correcting color and contrast; they lack even a hands-on gamma-correction tool. Beginners might not mind these omissions, but PSP Studio affords little room for users to evolve beyond the basics.

Jasc hasn't done much to make PSP Studio easier to use than Paint Shop Pro. The animated Get Started Guide screen is of very little educational value. There is an excellent Learning Center, but Paint Shop Pro 9 has exactly the same feature. The main reason PSP Studio is easier to use is simply the lack of advanced features that might distract some users.

Although PSP Album 5 is a very good program for organizing and sharing your digital image collection, it comes up short when compared with Photoshop Elements 3's Organizer component. Oddly, PSP Album lets you set options for creating a Web gallery, but there's no command for actually creating the gallery. You can do slide shows, but PSP Album lacks the advanced features and control offered by competing products, such as Photoshop Elements and even Microsoft Digital Image Suite 10.

PSP Studio's tools are effective. But despite a few unique features, such as a Bezier pen tool for drawing paths, the application is too limited. A bundle of the full Paint Shop Pro 9 and Paint Shop Photo Album 5 Deluxe Edition would be much more in line with what Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 has to offer. As it stands, the only argument for Paint Shop Pro Studio is its price.

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